East Oak Lane

East Oak Lane is a neighborhood at the northern end of the North Philadelphia planning district of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Many of the houses in the neighborhood are large single homes or twins built at a later period than much of central North Philadelphia. There is also a significant number of typical Philadelphia rowhouses. This area of Philadelphia was first settled in 1683 as William Penn's first neighborhood. In 1695, a Welshman named Griffith Miles bought 250 acres of land and built a log home along a dirt road that would later be known as Oak Lane. The area became known as Milestown in 1711, and as farming began to flourish, water-powered mills were built. The road that came to define the neighborhood, initially called Martin's Mill Road, was renamed Oak Lane by a landowner in 1860, in remembrance of an ancient oak tree that had blown down in a storm.